• Hemeroteca.Matanza de Ellacuría and the Spanish Jesuits; the horror of the only surviving universal justice case
  • Chronicle The day we were going to spend with Ellacuría ... and they killed him

More than 30 years later, the trial for the murders of five Spanish Jesuits , one Salvadoran and two domestic workers in November 1989 in El Salvador has started this Monday with two accused but it will remain in just one: the colonel and former vice minister of Innocent Defense Orlando Montano .

The court of the National Court has decided to exonerate Lieutenant René Yusshy Mendoza , one of the members of the El Salvador Army battalion who machine-gunned the Jesuits to death, led by Ignacio Ellacuría . And he has done so by the prescription of the crime , of which the 20 years established by law had already passed when for the first time the Court wanted to investigate him. Thus, Mendoza will go from accused to witness.

The court has accepted the prosecution's suggestion to delay Mendoza's testimony as a witness to a time when he can do so in person rather than by video conference. Thus, the National Court will listen to the lieutenant on July 7 from 10 am, a fundamental testimony, because René Mendoza was one of the members of the battalion that took the Jesuits out to the garden of the residence and riddled them with bullets.

Mendoza was this Monday following the opening day of the trial from the consulate of El Salvador in Chile , where he currently lives. The court, which was watching a Mendoza videoconference sitting in a consulate room and wearing a mask, has tried to connect with him, but a sound failure has prevented communication.

René Mondoza's exoneration from guilt has been requested until the accusations. And it is that this lieutenant not only served four years in prison in El Salvador, he repented, reinserted himself, "asked for and obtained forgiveness" or did not re-offend, but he collaborated with the Jesuits and with the lawyers from the first moment, until the point of assisting in the investigations of the prosecution itself. For all that, the defense , the Prosecutor's Office and the prosecution have asked that Mendoza not maintain his status as a defendant based on the prescription of his crime.

The brutal and collective crime occurred in the early hours of November 16, 1989. But in 2008, a few months before he prescribed, the Spanish judge Eloy Velasco attended the complaint from the Association for Human Rights of Spain (APDH-E) and of the Center For Justice and Accountability (CJA) and issued a search and arrest warrant against twenty military personnel for eight crimes of terrorism and one against humanity . That judicial action "interrupted" the time period, so technically, for those who were on that list, 20 years of the crime have not yet passed and, therefore, they can be tried.

Mendoza was not in that group, but Montano was. So the first has been exonerated this Monday, but the second will face justice.

And it will do so on Wednesday from 10 am, the time set for its declaration. That is, if she agrees to answer the questions of the prosecution and the Prosecutor's Office or avails herself of her right not to testify.

Montano, later deputy defense minister, was a colonel and was part of a group of high-ranking officers of the Salvadoran Army who ordered the "elimination without witnesses" of Father Ignacio Ellacuría. This Jesuit had publicly signified himself to achieve a peaceful solution to the conflict between the military and the guerrillas , a bloodletting that had caused tens of thousands of deaths. Qualified representatives of Liberation Theology , Ellacuría and the Jesuits who lived at the José Simeón Cañas Central American University (UCA) had denounced the systematic violence of the state apparatus and had also asked the guerrillas to cease the armed struggle, but they were designated by the military and the extreme right as "agents of communism".

After a few days of control of the UCA by the military, who came to search rooms, rooms, libraries and rooms, on the night of the 15th and early morning of November 16, 1989, the Atlacalt battalion broke into the residence, took out of its bedrooms all the people he found, he gathered them in the garden and opened fire on them. Those killed were Ignacio Ellacuría, Ignacio Martín Baró, Armando López, Segundo Montes, Juan Ramón Moreno, Joaquín López, Elba Julia Ramos and Celina Maricet Ramos .

The presumed maximum responsible for that crime were acquitted and even promoted by the Government of El Salvador, taking advantage of a controversial and internationally criticized Amnesty Law in 1993. They were the Chief of the General Staff and later Defense Minister, Emilio Ponce ; the general and chief of the Air Force, Rafael Bustillo ; the general and vice minister of Defense, Juan Orlando Cepeda ; Colonel and Chief of the Infantry Brigade, Francisco Elena Fuentes ; Colonel and later Vice Minister of Defense, Inocente Orlando Montano , and Colonel and Director of the Military School, Guillermo Benavides .

Only one of them will be tried. And it is that Montano had been arrested for perjury and administrative irregularities in his residence permits in the United States , a country that accepted his extradition to Spain. Montano has been incarcerated here since November 2017 and his provisional prison has been prolonged in extremis so that he can stand trial.

The Prosecutor's Office asks for 150 years in prison for his alleged participation in the "decision, design or execution" of the massacre.

In accordance with the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • National audience
  • Terrorism

TerrorismPolice coup against jihadism in Ciudad Real after arresting two people who were finishing a cell to attack

CataloniaA 'lone wolf' detained in Barcelona who pretended to attack imminently

TerrorismPolice detains a suspected "very violent" Daesh jihadist in a town in Madrid

Close links of interest

  • News
  • Translator
  • Programming
  • Calendar
  • Horoscope
  • Classification
  • League calendar
  • Films
  • Schools
  • Masters
  • Cut notes
  • Rich
  • Universities
  • Themes
  • Coronavirus
  • Masks
  • Rio Ave - Paços de Ferreira